“Enslaved Sovereign”: Aesthetics of Power in Foucault, Velázquez and Ovid

Abstract

Michel Foucault’s essay on Las Meninas has created spaces for diverse analyses of Velázquez’s painting and of Foucault’s reading of its intimations. My purpose in this paper is to argue for an interpretation of both painting and essay that is shaped by an exploration of aesthetics of power rather than by perspectival considerations. To further delineate Velázquez’s interest in the inherently antagonistic relation between artistic expression and institutional power, I extend my inquiry to his Fable of Arachne, a painting that could have served Foucault’s aesthetic and epistemological purposes well, and to a text from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, in which this painting is firmly rooted.

Opsomming

Michel Foucault se essay oor Las Meninas het die moontlikheid geskep vir uiteenlopende interpretasies van Velázquez se skildery asook van Foucault se eie vertolking van die betekenis daarvan. My doel in hierdie stuk is om aan te voer dat sowel die skildery as die essay geïnterpreteer moet word deur middel van 'n verkenning van die estetika van mag, en nie aan die hand van perspektiwiese oorwegings nie. Ten einde Velázquez se belangstelling in die inherent antago-nistiese verhoudig tussen artistieke uitdrukking en institusionele mag verder te karakteriseer, brei ek my ondersoek uit na sy Fabel van Arachne, 'n skildery wat Foucault se estetiese en epistemologiese doeleindes goed kon gedien het, asook na 'n teks uit Ovid se Metamorphoses, waarin hierdie skildery stewig gewortel is.